European Union
Former Irish prime minister: Europe is leader in global LGBTQ rights movement
Leo Varadkar in 2017 became Ireland’s first gay head of government.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar earlier this month said Europe is now at the forefront of the global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement.
“In many ways, Europe is the light,” he told the Washington Blade on Oct. 20 during an interview that took place near Harvard University. “It’s holding up against anti-LGBTQ policies.”
Varadkar, 46, in 2017 became Ireland’s first gay prime minister.
He stepped down in 2020 after his center-right party, Fine Gael, lost 15 parliament seats in the general election, but he remained in the government. Varadkar, whose father was born in Mumbai, in 2022 once again became prime minister.
Varadkar in 2024 resigned and stepped down as Fine Gael’s leader.
The Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights on Oct. 16 announced Varadkar’s appointment as a senior fellow for its Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program for the 2025-2026 academic year. He — along with former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and former acting Treasury Secretary David Lebryk — are also Hauser Leaders at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership for this year’s fall semester.
Varadkar during his fellowship will focus on LGBTQ and intersex rights within the EU.
He sat down with the Blade on the same day he spoke at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Varadkar on Tuesday participated in an event in Brussels that focused on LGBTQ and intersex rights in the EU.
New EU LGBTQ strategy ‘not wonderful, but at least it was done’
The European Commission on Oct. 8 released an LGBTQ and intersex rights strategy that focuses on three specific areas:
- Protecting LGBTIQ+ people (from hate-motivated harassment and violence, from discrimination, from conversion practices)
- Empowering LGBTIQ+ people through (equality bodies, rainbow families, promoting inclusion at workplace)
- Engaging society to advance LGBTIQ+ equality by (calling on all EU countries to adopt national strategies, improving the data collection and analysis, launching an ‘LGBTIQ+ Policy Forum’)
“It’s not wonderful, but at least it was done,” said Varadkar. “You won’t see that done in China, Russia, or even the United States, unfortunately.”
“Europe needs to hold the line, but also we want to focus on places where there is backsliding, like Bulgaria, like Slovakia,” he added, while also referring to the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Varadkar is among those who participated in this year’s Budapest Pride, even though Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government banned public LGBTQ events.
“It wasn’t just a regular Pride protest, and in Eastern Europe Pride is still a protest, very much so … they’re met by football hooligans, and police who aren’t necessarily there to support there to protect them,” Varadkar told the Blade. “This time, everyone joined in: students, unions, families, even more moderate political forces that might not always want to be associated with the LGBT cause, but it became about freedom of expression and became about free speech, and that’s why there was such a big turnout.”
Varadkar since he left office has also traveled to Bulgaria to support the country’s LGBTQ activists. Varadkar also spoke to the Blade about Russia and the Kremlin’s efforts to “influence and destabilize European societies.”
Russia in 2022 launched its war against Ukraine.
“One of the ways they do that is through election interference and misinformation online, and they’ve identified this as an issue that can divide European societies,” said Varadkar, specifically referring to the Russian government’s opposition to LGBTQ rights and its overall human rights record. “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has very much embraced the idea of traditional values and Russian Orthodox Christianity, and he’s using that as a wedge issue in Central and Eastern Europe.”
“So as ever our fight is part of a bigger fight that’s linked to things like democracy, human rights, academic freedom, press freedom,” added Varadkar. “We’re on the front line in the same battle, in my view.”
He also said the EU needs to be pragmatic in how it responds to Orbán and other anti-LGBTQ leaders.
“[The EU] is in a bit of a dilemma as to how it acts, how it does withdraw funding sometimes from countries if they’re in breach of the standards around the rule of law,” said Varadkar.
The European Commission in 2021 threatened to withhold funding to local and regional governments in Poland that declared themselves “LGBT-free zones.” The European Commission in 2022 sued Hungary over a law that a press release notes “singles out and targets content that ‘promotes or portrays’ what it refers to as ‘divergence from self-identity corresponding to sex at birth, sex change or homosexuality’ for individuals under 18.”
“Some of the more nationalist and populist leaders in Central and Eastern Europe; there’s nothing they want more than a fight with Brussels, these Western European elites … trying to impose their ideology on our country,” Varadkar told the Blade. “So that’s why I think the European Union has to be smart as to how it acts.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is among those who condemned the Budapest Pride ban. Varadkar told the Blade he “was disappointed there wasn’t more action” from Brussels “in relation to why Budapest Pride was being banned.”
Varadkar praises Sarah McBride
Ireland is among the countries that have issued travel advisories for transgender and nonbinary people who are planning to visit the U.S. since the Trump-Vance administration took office.
President Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration issued a sweeping executive order — Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government — that, among other things, bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers. Trump in his inaugural speech also said the federal government will only recognize two genders: male and female.
Trump in February issued another executive order that bans trans women and girls from female sports teams. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in August announced it will ensure “male aliens seeking immigration benefits aren’t coming to the U.S. to participate in women’s sports.”
The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s overall foreign policy.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Jan. 24 directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days in response to an executive order that Trump signed after his inauguration. Rubio later issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue operating after bowing to pressure, but the Blade has reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of gaps in U.S. funding.
Rubio in March announced 83 percent of U.S. Agency for International Development contacts had been cancelled, and the State Department would administer the remaining programs. USAID officially shut down on July 1.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding since the Trump-Vance administration took office.
“It has an impact, particularly on organizations in the Global South and in Central and Eastern Europe,” said Varadkar.
Varadkar told the Blade he is working with the Global Development Project and other philanthropic organizations to “fill some of the gap” in funding.
He said the current situation “demonstrates why we should never be too dependent on any government or corporations.” Varadkar also spoke more broadly about the Trump-Vance administration and its policies.
“I’m a guest in this country. I’m not here to tell you what to do. The American people decide who the president is. I don’t, but I am genuinely disappointed to see the backsliding on human rights and academic freedom and free speech here in America,” said Varadkar.
“What do I associate America with? I associate it with being one of the homes of democracy and helping to spread it around the world. I associate it with free speech, sometimes even saying any crazy thing you want. And I associate it with as being the birthplace of the LGBT liberation movement. I think of Stonewall. I think of the Castro,” he added. “It all started here, long before anyone in Ireland could ever imagine homosexual acts being decriminalized, let alone a gay person being the head of government.”
“To me this is where it all started,” said Varadkar. “It’s particularly worrying that things appear to be going in the wrong direction here, and that has impacts in the rest of the world too, that Americans might be very aware of.”
Varadkar also said he admires U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who in 2024 became the first openly trans person elected to Congress.
“She’s there for everyone in Delaware, and yes, she is trans too,” Varadkar told the Blade. “She’s willing to be a leader, but I think as LGBT leaders, we should make sure that our causes are part of the wider welfare and society and not separate.”
European Union
European Parliament backs EU-wide conversion therapy ban
More than 1.2 million people backed campaign
The European Parliament on Wednesday voted in favor of banning so-called conversion therapy across the European Union.
ACT (Against Conversion Therapy) LGBT in 2024 launched a campaign in support of the ban through the EU’s European Citizens Initiative framework. More than 1.2 million people ultimately signed it.
The proposed ban had the support of 405 MEPs. The European Commission is expected to formally respond to it by May 18.
Seven EU countries — Belgium, Cyprus, France, Malta, Norway, Portugal, and Spain — have banned conversion therapy outright.
Greece in 2022 banned the practice for minors. German lawmakers in 2020 passed a law that prohibits conversion therapy for minors and for adults who have not consented to undergoing the widely discredited practice.
European Union
Top EU court strikes down Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law
Ruling issued days after voters outed Prime Minister Viktor Orbán
The European Union’s top court on Tuesday struck down Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law.
Hungarian MPs in 2021 approved Act LXXIX of 2021.
“It shall be forbidden to make accessible to persons who have not attained the age of 18 years advertisement that depicts sexuality in a gratuitous manner or that propagates or portrays divergence from self-identity corresponding to sex at birth, sex change or homosexuality,” it reads.
The European Commission in 2022 challenged the law. Sixteen EU countries — Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden — joined the lawsuit. The European Parliament also supported it. Outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, for his part, said his government would defend the law.
The EU Court of Justice heard the case in 2024.
A press release that announced the ruling on Tuesday said Hungary “acted in breach of EU law.”
“The court finds, for the first time, a separate infringement of Article 2 TEU (Treaty on European Union), which lists the values on which the (European) Union is founded and which are common to all the Member States,” it reads. “The aspects of the amending law targeting content which portrays or promotes deviation from the self-identity corresponding to the sex assigned at birth, gender reassignment, or homosexuality constitute a coordinated series of discriminatory measures which are in breach, in a way that is both manifest and particularly serious, of the rights of non-cisgender persons — including transgender persons — or non-heterosexual persons, as well as the values of respect for human dignity, equality and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.”
“Consequently, that law is contrary to the very identity of the (European) Union as a common legal order in a society in which pluralism prevails,” notes the press release. “Hungary cannot validly rely on its national identity as justification for adopting a law which is in breach of the values referred to above.”
The Háttér Society, a Hungarian LGBTQ rights group, said the ruling “is a milestone for the protection of human rights in the European Union, and it is also a historic victory for LGBTQI people in Hungary.”
The court issued its ruling nine days after Péter Magyar ousted Orbán in Hungary’s elections.
Orbán took office in 2010.
He and his government faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ crackdown that included laws that banned Pride events and other public LGBTQ events. (Upwards of 100,000 people last June denied the prohibition and marched in Budapest’s annual Pride parade.)
“Those amendments constitute a particularly serious interference with several fundamental rights protected by the (EU) Charter (of Fundamental Rights), namely the prohibition on discrimination based on sex,” notes the court’s press release.
The EU since Orbán took office has withheld upwards of €35 billion ($41.2 billion) in funds to Hungary in response to concerns over corruption, rule of law, and other issues. Magyar has said he will work with Brussels to unfreeze the money.
ILGA-Europe Deputy Director Katrin Hugendubel urged Maygar’s government to repeal the law.
“With this ruling, the CJEU (The EU Court of Justice) is confirming what we have been saying for six years,” said Hugendubel. “There is now no excuse for the Commission not to require Hungary to quickly withdraw the law. Hungary cannot enter a post-Orbán era without repealing this legislation, including the Pride ban.”
“If Péter Magyar truly aims to be pro-EU, he must place this at the top of his agenda for his first 100 days in office, as an essential part of his EU facing reforms,” added Hugendubel.
Bulgaria
Top EU court issues landmark transgender rights ruling
Member states must allow name, gender changes on ID documents
The European Union’s highest court on Thursday ruled member states must allow transgender people to legally change their name and gender on ID documents.
The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg issued the ruling in the case of “Shipova,” a trans woman from Bulgaria who moved to Italy.
“Shipova” had tried to change her gender and name on her Bulgarian ID documents, but courts denied her requests for nearly a decade.
A ruling the Bulgarian Supreme Court of Cassation issued in 2023 essentially banned trans people from legally changing their name and gender on ID documents. Two Bulgarian LGBTQ and intersex rights groups — the Bilitis Foundation and Deystvie — and ILGA-Europe and TGEU – Trans Europe and Central Asia supported the plaintiff and her lawyers.
“Because her life in Italy also depended on her Bulgarian documents, the lack of documents reflecting her lived gender creates an obstacle to her right to move and reside within EU member states,” said the groups in a press release. “This mismatch between her gender identity and expression and her gender marker in her official documents leads to discrimination in all areas of life where official documents are required. This includes everyday activities such as going to the doctor and paying for groceries by card, finding employment, enrolling in education, or obtaining housing.”
Denitsa Lyubenova, a lawyer with Desytvie, in the press release said the case “concerns the dignity, equality, and legal certainty of trans people in Bulgaria.” TGEU Senior Policy Officer Richard Köhler also praised the ruling.
“Today, the EU Court of Justice has taken an important step towards a right to legal gender recognition in the EU,” said Köhler. “Member states must allow their nationals living in another member state to change their gender data in public registries and identity cards to ensure they can fully enjoy their freedom of movement. National laws or courts cannot stand in their way.”
“Thousands of trans people in the EU are breathing a sigh of relief today,” added Köhler.
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